Every now and then somebody sees the face of Jesus on a pancake, or a sandwich, or refrigerator mold, and people get all excited about it. I’ve seen photographs of some of these wonders, and usually they don’t look that much like Jesus to me — Willie Nelson, maybe — but then, I’m not all that keen about seeing the face of Jesus on things.

I suspect that people who actually see Jesus on pancakes are people who deeply, deeply crave some kind of whoop-dee-doo mystical experience that will give them Hope, or Peace, or at least some cash from an eBay sale. They want to see Jesus on that pancake so badly that their senses arrange for them to see it. Senses tend to be more susceptible to suggestion/desire than most of us realize. You can see just about anything if you are raving desperate enough to see it.

This John Fund column titled “Liberals in Retreat” strikes me as the political equivalent of seeing Jesus on a pancake. He’s seized upon three unrelated elections in Colorado, Australia, and Norway, as evidence of Conservatism triumphant. All around the globe, he thinks, liberals have panicked and are scampering for the exits. Only conservatism speaks for the people now.

Sorry, Fund. I am not scampering. I don’t see anyone else scampering.

First off, the words “liberal” and “conservative,” when applied to politics outside the U.S., don’t mean quite the same thing as they do here. Although there might be general and fuzzy resemblances, the political dynamics of Australia and Norway are not the same as the political dynamics in the U.S. Frankly, I think a lot of what we’re experiencing here — in which a large portion of our government has been taken over by people who are stark raving bonkers and refuse to actually govern — is unprecedented in world history. Or, at least, unprecedented in an alleged first-world democracy.

Second, the Colorado recall election may be a blow to the gun control issue nationwide, or it may be significant in some regions but not in others. But gun control has been a back-burner issue for Dems for way more than a decade. We keep hoping its hour will come round, but until it does we are mostly unwilling to sacrifice progress on other issues to fight for it.

I see the Colorado recall, and the various batty secession schemes cropping up in rural America, not as harbingers but as last hurrahs. These actions are mostly coming from clusters of insulated, rural whites who are out of touch with where the rest of America is heading.

John Fund is so desperate to see Jesus on the pancake that he called forth Grover Norquist to back him up. Norquist is a man who can see just about anything on a pancake. But Norquist is a walking last hurrah if there ever was one.

It’s too early to know if Bill De Blasio’s big win in New York City is a harbinger or a freak lightning strike. The wingnuts are in denial about this, but I say it was de Blasio’s unabashed liberalism that made him stand out. The position of Mayor of New York has been filled by Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, a.k.a. Rudy Giuliani Lite, for more than two decades. And my sense of things is that New Yorkers are really, really done with that, and want something different. No more squishy, friends-of-business moderates. We’ll see.

In the meantime, expect conservative pundits to keep seeing liberals in retreat — “Jesus on the pancake,” if you will — because they are raving desperate to see it. But I’m not seeing it.

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You’re absolutely right that conservatism in the rest of the world is not directly comparable to American Republicans. As an example, Canada’s current prime minister Stephen Harper is the most right-wing PM we’ve ever elected. But in 2008 I remember an analysis of his policies and Hilary Clinton’s, and Harper was significantly left of her on almost every issue.

There are Canadians who would make good Republicans if they were transplanted, and they all tend to vote for Stephen Harper, but they are a tiny minority. If the GOP’s platform were floated in a Canadian election, they would be laughed off the hustings.

I agree. In 1860 and 1861 you had whole states seceding from the Union, but now it’s just a few forlorn counties trying to secede from their states. That was a bang, this is a whimper.

And of course the sheer stupidity of thinking their going to be able to form new states is a sign of advanced degeneracy. I love the irony of these people ranting about how we’re not following the Constitution. If they knew anything about said Constitution, they would realize there’s zero chance that, for instance, the Democrats who control the California legislature and the US Senate are going to vote to send two more Ted Cruzes to Washington.

Thanks, maha, but I refuse to give John Fund-dled (a sibling) a ‘click.’

And besides, he’s not going to say anything new, if I did decide to go there.

It’s going to be like you said – the same Jesus on an outside wall with a rust-pattern on it, that the faithful will say was caused by Jesus’ tears for the unbelievers, and the wickedness that they bring into the faithful’s little myopic world.

Conservatism has run its course, I think you’ll find, Fund, if you could open your eyes and look.
The public is starting to catch on.

And the ‘dumpster’ of Republican religious morons in Congress is helping people to realize how out of touch with reality Conservatives have been, for quite awhile now.

The House and Senate Republicans still want more tax cuts for the rich – the same idea which has a proven 30+ year track record of abject failure.

And they want to shut the government down, due to their “Terrible-two’s” snippy-weepy-wailing-hissy-fit, over Obamacare – which was their own Heritage Foundation Plan.

And they’ll happily, maybe even giddily – AGAIN – refuse to raise the Debt Ceiling, potentially causing another Rec/Depr-ession in this country, and around the whole globe.
ALL, because they aren’t getting their way.

A jircle-cerk of Sociopathic Manichean Nihilists, is what the Republican Party has become.
But, sadly, a well-funded one.

Well, in all fairness, when Obama won the presidential primary nomination in Alabama back in 2008. I kinda thought I saw Jesus in the pancake. At least in the sense that we’ve overcome racial hatred in the United States, but reality proved that a suppressed racial hatred was only brought to the surface as a result of Obama’s subsequent election.